The Second Oil And Gas IPO Since The Crash

WildHorse Resource Development Corp, an independent oil and gas field operator focused on the Eagle Ford shale in Texas, has filed for an initial public offering with the Securities and Exchange Commission, planning to raise US$650 million.

The money, the company said, will go towards completing the acquisition of Burleson North. Burleson County is a legacy producing part of Eagle Ford, which also has conventional oil deposits.

WildHorse did not specify the number of stock to be issued or the price range for the offering, only saying that it had applied to be listed on the NYSE under the symbol WRD. The bookrunners are BofA Merrill Lynch, BMP Capital Markets, Wells Fargo, Barclays, and Citigroup, with another eight institutions as co-managers.

According to the company’s prospectus, it has net acreage of 374,938 acres in two states: Louisiana and Texas. It boasted production growth at a compound annual rate of 57 percent between January 2014 and September 2016. The latest production rate is 14,000 bpd.

WildHorse’s IPO is only the second one since the price crash from 2014. The first one, of Extraction Oil & Gas, took place last month. The company sold 33.3 million shares at US$19, registering a 15-percent gain in the first day of trading. This gave Extraction Oil & Gas a market value of US$2.4 billion. At the time, the WSJ noted that the last IPO of a U.S. energy company had taken place when oil was twice as expensive.

In a sign that the industry may be getting used to the new price normal, another company has been reportedly preparing for a listing: Double Eagle Energy Holdings. The Fort Worth-based firm has acreage in the Permian Basin, the most attractive shale play at the moment. According to several bankers, the company could be worth up to US$3 billion.